Prinny's Taylor is the title of a biography of Louis Bazalgette, who was tailor to the Prince of Wales, later George IV, for 32 years. It was written by his great-great-great-great grandson, Charles Bazalgette, and is now available as a trade paperback from Amazon and other distributors.

This blog has no connection with tailors or the Georgian period but it’s my blog and we all deserve a break, including the readers!

Having been brought up listening to the music of Benjamin Britten, I remembered yesterday his arrangements of folk songs, which were sung on record by Peter Pears. A ballad that had always intrigued me was ‘Little Sir Willliam.’ In Britten’s version it goes:

Easter day was a holiday Of all days in the year, And all the little schoolfellows went out to play But Sir William was not there.

Mama went to the School wife’s house And knock-ed at the ring, Saying, “Little Sir William, if you are there, Pray let your mother in.”

The School wife open’d the door and said: “He is not here today. He is with the little schoolfellows out on the green Playing some pretty play.”

Mamma went to the Boyne water That is so wide and deep, Saying, “Little Sir William, if you are there, Pray pity your mother’s weep.”

“How can I pity your weep, Mama, And I so long in pain? For the little pen knife sticks close to my heart And the School wife hath me slain.

“Lay my Prayer Book at my head, MamaAnd my grammar at my feet, So that all the little schoolfellows as they pass by May read them for my sake.”

I have to admit that to my childish ear it was always “my Grandma at my feet”. I always wondered why the school-wife should have murdered that rather sanctimonious little boy in a fit of pique, and why Mama went to her house when it was a holiday? What emerges from my reseach is far more shocking than I had imagined. Britten described this as a Somersetshire ballad, but as far as I know there is no Boyne-water in that county. It sounds more as if it came there via Northern Ireland. The lyrics were sanitised, perhaps by Britten, because the original ballad has the villain not as a homicidal pedagogue but a Jew-wife, i.e., a Jewess.

This older ballad, with many variations, is called ‘Sir Hugh, or The Jew’s Daughter’, and is most recently quoted in ‘English and Scottish Ballads’, selected and edited by the American historian Francis James Child (1825-1896.). His source is given as ‘Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern’ by William Motherwell, (1797-1835). In his introduction Motherwell says: “Two copies of this ballad appeared in Herd’s Collection, Edinburgh 1776, under the above title. A third is printed in Dr. Percy’s Reliques, and Mr. Jamieson has given another copy of the same ballad, taken down from recitation, in Ireland.” Maybe that explains the Boyne-water, though that does not appear in the original.

A further book in French which quotes the ballad is: ‘Hugues de Lincoln: Recueil de Ballades Anglo-Normande et Ecossoisses Relatives au Meurtre de cet Enfant Commis par les Juifs en 1260’, compiled by Francisque Michel. This is supposedly taken from the writings of St. Hugh of Lincoln (1140-1200) but many other sources are given. What the connection is, apart from the name, between the saint and the dead child was is not made clear. It is a particularly nasty work of anti-Semitism.

So now it appears that we have a Scottish ballad which in fact comes from Lincoln. It starts with Hugh kicking his ball though the woman’s window, and he asks for his ball back, whereupon she asks him in to dine, finally overcoming his reservations with offers of apples. She leads him though various rooms before stabbing him with her pen-knife, watching him bleed, and even in one version catching the blood in a golden cup, until ‘There was nae mair (blood) within. She laid him on a dressing table, She dress’d him like a swine’, garnished with the apples. She then puts him into a case of lead and drops him down a fifty-fathom draw-well.

So, far from the act of an envious schoolmarm, what we actually have is a case of ritual slaughter. The significance of Easter Day is that in the middle ages stories were rife that the Jews would crucify or otherwise murder Christian children at Easter. Mostly these stories were shown to be false, but they served to whip up hatred against the Jews. Because of their talent as businessmen and moneylenders they were in fact regarded as necessary by the barons and noblemen, and were given protection by a succession of kings.

“Little Sir William” scans better than “Little Sir Hugh”, so that the probable reason for the change of name. I will never quite feel the same way about the song. Anyway, here is a very nice version of Britten’s arrangement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JgMIhA4Nb8

7 Responses to POOR LITTLE SIR WILLIAM

I’m familiar with the SteeleyeSpan version of Little Sir Hugh and it had never occurred to me that there was any hidden antisemetic twist to it, I’d always assumed that the Lady who was dressed in green was some kind of fey entity and was using his death as part of the teind to Hell as in the legend of Tam Lin. Fascinating research.

Do you think the School Wife connection may be due to the fact that "School Wife" rhymes with "Jew Wife"? This maybe just a softer retelling of the harsher Sir Hugh, but with the same underlying antisemitism?

That is very interesting, Alison. The one my mother had was an old 78 and it certainly said ‘school-wife’ in that version. I wonder if they sanitized it for that recording. Thy must certainly have made more than one.
The Youtube version I added a link to used ‘school-wife’ too.